Brendan O'Neill is editor of the online magazine spiked and is a columnist for the Big Issue in London and The Australian in, er, Australia. His satire on environmentalism, Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas, is published by Hodder & Stoughton. He doesn't
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Perhaps it’s time for a chav-toff alliance against the killjoys who dominate modern Britain

Julian Fellowes’ comments about “poshism” – alleged discrimination against toffs – has ignited a war of words over which section of society is the most pilloried these days. Is it really the upper orders, mocked for wearing tweed and eating pigeons and smearing their mugs with fox blood? Or is it in fact the lower classes, in particular “chavs”, who are lambasted for being feckless, foul-mouthed and frightfully badly dressed? Actually, what the two sides in this weird battle for the moral high ground of victimology overlook is the fact that both toffs *and* chavs have become the targets of opinion-formers’ opprobrium in recent years, and for the same reason: because they are looked upon as sinners against the middle-class mores that now dominate modern Britain.

The two sections of society it is acceptable for the media to point and laugh at are commoners and the privileged. Both the trackie-wearing chavs who terrify the commentariat and the horseriding poshos who appal them are seen as sharing certain, apparently retrograde traits. So both are verbally assaulted for their conspicuous consumption, with chavs attacked for allegedly being addicted to Nike and Fila products that they can scarcely afford and the spoilt daughters of toffs ridiculed for covering themselves from head to manicured toe in Louis Vuitton. Both are slated for their eating habits, too: chavs are said to be permanently on the cusp of heart-stopping obesity with their reckless scoffing of Big Macs while the favoured foods of the moneyed set – foie gras, game – are denounced as unsustainable and cruel.

Both are pilloried for enjoying booze too much, too: successive governments have declared war on “binge-drinking”, in order to try to wean the less well-off off their cans of lager, while journalists spy on Conservative Party get-togethers to make sure no former Etoni dares enjoy a glass of Champagne during this time of economic hardship. Both are attacked for covering themselves in bling (sovereign rings for the poor, blood diamonds for the rich) and for being thick: in the comedy characters of Vicky Pollard and Tim Nice But Dim we can glimpse the middle-class prejudice that both the class below them and the class above them are dumb as monkeys. And worst of all, both are said to be eco-unaware: chavs are forever attacked for taking carbon-vomiting cheap flights to cities in Eastern Europe, “destinations chosen not for their architecture or culture but because people can fly there for 99p and get loaded for a tenner”, in the snobby words of the achingly middle-class green campaign group Plane Stupid. And toffs are attacked for driving 4x4s, that most evil vehicle, or for having the temerity to moan about windfarms. Chavs are looked upon as a carbon stain on our inner cities, and toffs as an eco-blot on the landscape.

The acceptability of laughing at chavs and toffs can be seen in those annoying reality TV shows The Only Way Is Essex and Made In Chelsea, the first of which invites us to ridicule Essex boys and girls, the second of which invites us to stare in bemusement at the horsey laughs of rich twentysomethings. In the view of that impeccably middle-class set – TV producers – it’s clear that both the Steves and the Hugos of modern Britain are fair game. And the reason they’re both hated is not hard to fathom: it’s because neither of these societal sets buys into the meek, mild-mannered, “fairness”-obsessed, eco-friendly, multicultural outlook of the increasingly influential middle classes, and so they are branded Beyond The Pale. Perhaps it’s time for a chav-toff alliance, a peasants-and-princesses revolt against the miserable killjoys who treat anyone who has a different lifestyle to them as a weird alien race.